Top 10 Strategic Technologies for Government in 2016

Open Data

Open data in government results from "open by default" or "open by preference" governance policies and information management practices. These make license-free data available in machine-readable formats to anyone who has the right to access it without any requirement for identification or registration. Open datais published as collected at the source ("raw") at the lowest granularity, as determined by privacy, security or data quality considerations. Open data is accessible with open APIs and is not subject to any trademark or copyright.

From undetected rogue email servers to numerous breaches, including to the OPM, the government has had a tough year. Factor in the many outdated systems still being used to drive our country and it makes for a terrifying story. While some might argue that the sheer size of the government makes managing tech systems daunting, it is a task that is imperative to both our national and personal security, as well as for supporting fully digital end-to-end citizen services.

According to Gartner, public sector technology spending is expected to remain flat in 2016, following a 5.2 percent decrease in 2015. The "do more with less" motto that picked up so much steam during the Great Recession has left a chasm between where we are and where we need to be. Government CIOs are under great pressure to optimize IT and digitally transform their organizations, but are fighting "organizational and cultural challenges that are barriers to harnessing the synergistic potential of social, mobile, data analytics, cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) to drive transformational change."

To enable government transformation initiatives, Gartner has identified the top 10 strategic technologies in 2016 and provided recommendations to CIOs and IT leaders regarding adoption and benefits.